The Washington Wizards do not get the luxury of easing into 2026. They open Summer League on Thursday night at 9 p.m. Eastern against the Utah Jazz, and that matters because this is no longer just harmless July basketball. For a team that has won fewer than 20 games for a third straight season, even these early reps carry a little more weight than usual.
That is where Tre Johnson comes into the picture. Washington’s summer schedule is supposed to be about development, experimentation and finding something worth believing in. But after that kind of season, the bar is not especially high. The real question is whether the young group can look organised, competitive and ready to avoid the same tired problems once the games start to count.
A proper opening night test
The opener against the Utah Jazz gives Washington an immediate chance to set a tone. Summer League results are never the whole story, of course, but they do reveal something about pace, structure and composure. If the Wizards look sharp and purposeful, that is at least a sign that the summer is being used correctly. If they look scattered, the concerns from the last three seasons will still be hanging around.
Washington then plays the Nets in Brooklyn on the second day of a back-to-back before travelling to Miami for a Saturday matinee. That is a decent early stretch for a team trying to find rhythm quickly. There is no hiding place in a schedule like that, and no point pretending otherwise. These are the games where young players either start building confidence or expose how much work still needs doing.
Why this actually matters
The Wizards selected AJ Dybantsa with the No. 1 overall selection, which naturally puts a spotlight on every minute Washington plays this summer. But Tre Johnson’s presence in the conversation is part of the larger point: this is about identifying who can help, who can handle responsibility and who can survive pressure when it arrives. Summer League will not answer every question. It rarely does. But for a franchise coming off a third straight season with fewer than 20 wins, it can at least show whether the next phase is real or merely hopeful noise.
So yes, this is only Summer League. But it is also the first look at a team trying to prove that the bottoming-out is over. Against the Utah Jazz on Thursday night, the Wizards can start doing that immediately.
